BATON ROUGE - With the looming deadline for the East Baton Rouge Metro Council to approve the budget for next year, long-term solutions are being discussed to stabilize the city-parish, and some leaders are saying that changing the form of government for the city-parish could resolve some issues.

After spearheading the incorporation of St. George, council member Andrew Murrell is no stranger to change.

"We think each municipality should control its own future," Murrell said.

Wednesday night, as the EBR Metro Council listened to various departments' requests for funding from the city-parish, another conversation sparked. Metro Council member Dwight Hudson suggested that one solution to the city-parish's financial problems could be to have separate budgets for the city of Baton Rouge and the parish.

"It might be something we look at for next calendar year," Metro Council member Dwight Hudson said. "There's no time to do it before we would vote on the 2026 budget, but I think it is an exercise that we're going to have to take probably this year."

For that to happen, leaders would have to look at the cost to run unincorporated parts of the parish, and at what it would really cost to run constitutional services.

"We can get a better understanding of where we need to fill those gaps," Hudson said.

Moreover, Murrell said he's on board so that each city can provide resources individually and target the areas most in need.

"Each municipality would then pass or not pass their own millage for that service, or however they want to pay for it," Murrell said.